How much does your country invest?

Last year, total investment (both from the public and the private sectors) by European Union (EU) Member States amounted to almost €3 100 billion. Construction accounted for about half of these investments, with machinery, equipment & weapons systems (31%) and intellectual property products (19%) following. The intellectual property products category has shown the largest increase in investment in proportion to total capital investment.

Overall, total investment was equivalent to 20.1% of GDP in 2017, compared with 22.4% ten years ago, just before the economic and financial crisis. This represents a decrease of 2.3 percentage points (pp). The fall in investment is even more pronounced in the euro area: from 23.2% in 2007 to 20.5% in 2017 (-2.7 pp).

Ratio of investment to GDP highest in the Czech Republic and Sweden, lowest in Greece

Among the EU Member States, in 2017 investment accounted for a quarter of GDP in the Czech Republic (25.2%) and Sweden (24.9%). Estonia (23.7%), Austria (23.5%), Ireland (23.4%), Belgium (23.3%), Romania and Finland (both 22.6%) as well as France (22.4%) all had investment rates of over 20% of GDP.

At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest ratio of investment to GDP was recorded by Greece (12.6%), followed by Portugal (16.2%), the United Kingdom (16.9%), Luxembourg (17.0%), Italy (17.5%) and Poland (17.7%).

In contrast, the ratio slightly rose between 2007 and 2017 in Sweden (from 23.9% of GDP in 2007 to 24.9% in 2017, or +1.0 pp), Austria (+0.6 pp) and Germany (+0.2 pp), while it remained almost stable in Belgium (+0.1 pp).